As the ways in which people access content continue to change fast, this report offers ten predictions for the future of audience measurement.

Over the last ten years, audiences via 'legacy' platforms like print have declined, while digital audiences have grown, which has changed the economics and affordability of audience measurement.

The report predicts that in future researchers will need to make use of mixed methods to identify and track audiences, as single source methods can no longer capture the totality of audience behaviour.

Random samples will still have value, but they will be supplemented with much larger databases.

Audience measurement will not be displaced by the programmatic targeting of digital users, as some have predicted, as people will continue to lead off-line as well as on-line lives for the foreseeable future.

Advertisers will still need to target new customers, as well as those who have already bought from them or are researching their products online.

This article details a winning case study of the Excellence in Pioneering Analytics Innovation award category from the 2015 Genius Awards. View Summary

This article details a winning case study of the Excellence in Pioneering Analytics Innovation award category from the 2015 Genius Awards. The Genius Awards were created in 2013 by the analytics software provider MarketShare (now a Neustar Solution) to emphasize the importance of connecting marketing to actual business results. The article describes how the media company Turner applies data-driven analytics to the entire media process – from planning, to targeting, to measuring. Now Media, created by Turner in 2012, is a data-driven platform which fuels advanced analytics to enable better media planning and true return on investment measurement.

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Enriching Media Data: A Special Report from the U.S. Coalition of Innovative Media Measurement - Quality Is Key Requisite for Maximizing Return on Advertising Investment

The growing number of consumer data sources – with the complexity of integrations across multiple consumer touch points – poses a challenge for end users to assess data quality. View Summary

The growing number of consumer data sources – with the complexity of integrations across multiple consumer touch points – poses a challenge for end users to assess data quality. Gaining a better understanding of the underlying quality of data, to inform how best to deploy for advertising and marketing decisions, is the principal issue. The primary purpose of this study (conducted on behalf of the Coalition of Innovative Media Measurement [CIMM]) was to help inform the general media community about the quality, recency, consistency, and representative aspects of third-party data. The secondary purpose was to provide feedback on the industry's appetite for master data and reporting standardization.

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When should we ask, when should we measure?: Comparing information from passive and active data collection

This paper compares passive online data collection with using questionnaires to conduct consumer research and provides recommendations for how these methods can complement each other.

It is difficult for panellists to properly recall online activity, even the last website they visited, and data obtained through questionnaires deviates from data collected through meters.

People report frequency of website visits more accurately in the cases of 'always' or 'never', than more complex time intervals ('sometimes' or 'rarely'), and have better recall when asked about the last two months than the last seven days.

Limits of passive data collection include the inability to account for shared devices and that behaviour is skewed towards those consumers who accept being metered and may be unrepresentative of the general population.

While surveys remain the most efficient tool to collect information about subjective variables, passive data collection can improve the information by providing objective data and can be used to select appropriate samples.

Advertising influences brand purchase through short-term effects determined by direct increases in penetration, basket size, and buy rate. Advertising also influences brand purchase through long-term effects determined by indirect increases of future purchases through trial and increases in loyalty and brand equity. The current study measured the long-term effect of television advertising by tracking households’ purchases that were exposed to advertising out for a year after the initial short-term period. By measuring the increases in these 'future purchases', this method captured the influence of advertising on long-term brand purchases. It also reported the multiplier required to translate the short-term measured effect into the total long-term and short-term effects of advertising.

Gian Fulgoni, co-founder and chairman emeritus of comScore, explores the risks of using online-survey panels for marketing managers who rely on online-survey results to make spending decisions on digital marketing. View Summary

Gian Fulgoni, co-founder and chairman emeritus of comScore, explores the risks of using online-survey panels for marketing managers who rely on online-survey results to make spending decisions on digital marketing. Fulgoni's research shows survey panel respondents" often as being "heavier users of the Internet than the average consumer - causing their survey responses to be biased toward the Internet" and unable to "recall accurately their own actual behavior."

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Research Quality: The Interaction of Sampling and Weighting in Producing a Representative Sample Online: An Excerpt from the ARF's "Foundations of Quality 2" Initiative

This paper discusses the effects of sampling and weighting, and whether tight sampling control removes the need for weighting. View Summary

This paper discusses the effects of sampling and weighting, and whether tight sampling control removes the need for weighting. Weighting, the practice of giving some responses more influence over a final result, is a controversial tool. Weighting is often used in online surveys in order to better reflect the population. The need for weighting is discussed when tight sampling specifications have been implemented - whereby the people surveyed have been selected to accurately reflect population demographics. This study finds that there is no firm conclusion as to the need for weighting after tight sampling, but that complex sampling specifications may result in different practices from providers. Weighting reduces the risk of unreliable sampling.

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Guardian: Audiences not platforms

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Ian Gibbs, MRS Awards, Finalist, December 2013

This article describes how the Guardian, the UK newspaper group, developed a cross-media planning tool to encourage advertisers to use a broader range of its platforms.

This article describes how the Guardian, the UK newspaper group, developed a cross-media planning tool to encourage advertisers to use a broader range of its platforms.

The company had found that most of its advertising revenue came from print, despite large multi-channel presence.

This tool sought to help planners buy ads based on the audience they wanted to target, rather than the media.

The tool allows planners to understand audience behaviour across platforms and target them appropriately.

It has resulted in the purchase of 'off the shelf' multi-channel campaigns, as well as the building of tailored plans.

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Best of Both Worlds?: Can we make convenience samples representative?

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Pete Doe and Robert Smith, ESOMAR, Congress, Istanbul, September 2013

This paper discusses the reliability of online panel data, considering the issue of sample bias by examining different methods of selecting and weighting samples from panels. View Summary

This paper discusses the reliability of online panel data, considering the issue of sample bias by examining different methods of selecting and weighting samples from panels. Many companies have large online respondent panels which allow data and insight to be generated quickly and cheaply. However, the methods used to recruit respondents are not scientific and suffer from self-selection. Sample matching against a smaller, but statistically representative panel has been suggested as a means to reduce sample bias and to enable a statistically representative sample to be selected. This paper examines the extent to which bias can be reduced using this approach, and the relevant factors that must be taken into account.

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The Marketer's Dilemma: Focusing on a Target or a Demographic? The Utility of Data-Integration Techniques

Data-integration techniques can be useful tools as marketers continue to improve overall efficiency and return on investment. View Summary

Data-integration techniques can be useful tools as marketers continue to improve overall efficiency and return on investment. This is true because of the value of the techniques themselves and also because the current advertising market, based on demographic buying, has major opportunities for arbitrage in the range of 10 percent to 25 percent (where in that range depends on the nature of the vertical). The current study reviews different methods of data integration in pursuing such negotiations.

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Planning television as a WOM driver: Insights from CBS and Keller Fay

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Geoffrey Precourt, Event Reports, Advertising Week, October 2012

This report from New York Advertising Week covers a presentation by the broadcaster CBS and agency Keller Fay about how media generates word of mouth (WOM). View Summary

This report from New York Advertising Week covers a presentation by the broadcaster CBS and agency Keller Fay about how media generates word of mouth (WOM). It specifically describes research indicating that TV drives conversations about brands better than any other media. The study brought a number of data sources together (segmentation, Nielsen viewing and WOM data) to build a profile of what sparked conversations among influential viewers (“media trendsetters”). It found that TV was referred to in almost 20% of all offline "brand conversations" (over half of which driven by commercials) – and 27% of conversations initiated by the group of influential viewers. It is argued that the new data and its findings enable advertisers to target programs popular with these influential viewers, thus optimising their media planning with WOM generation as a strategic objective.

This paper introduces the Arbitron Mobile Meter, a framework to conduct user experience research in the mobile and wireless sector. View Summary

This paper introduces the Arbitron Mobile Meter, a framework to conduct user experience research in the mobile and wireless sector. The approach utilises different types of data collected using on-device meters in customer panels alongside advanced analytics to convert the data into actionable insights. The paper provides an analysis of the data collected from 20,000 panellists and addresses ways to scale data collection so representative data can be obtained from different national markets.

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The Future is Now: In Pursuit of a More Efficient and Effective Media Strategy

Poltrack and Bowen share a system that allows advertisers to have a 360-degree perspective of their core prospects with regard to media consumption, which will enable marketers to move beyond pure dem...

Poltrack and Bowen share a system that allows advertisers to have a 360-degree perspective of their core prospects with regard to media consumption, which will enable marketers to move beyond pure demographic reach to quality reach.

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What Scanner-Panel Data Tell Us about Advertising: A Detective Story with a Dark Twist

Scanner-panel data have long been important for understanding advertising’s effects. Although the nature of advertising often has been investigated with scanner-panel data, the nature and value of scanner-panel data itself have rarely been considered. View Summary

Scanner-panel data have long been important for understanding advertising’s effects. Although the nature of advertising often has been investigated with scanner-panel data, the nature and value of scanner-panel data itself have rarely been considered. Although scanner-panel data are revered - even worshiped - by many, they have measurement issues like any other complex data set. While early estimates of advertising effectiveness from scanner-panel data may have appeared too low, some estimates are not vastly different from other data bases as can be ascertained from recent meta-analyses. Learning about the situations when, where, and how advertising does have large effects, however, is critical, and the future development of scanner-panel data does have a way to go to help answer these key questions. To make scanner-panel data more powerful, we recommend that choice data sets be augmented to correct for their inherent weaknesses.

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NBC Universal on the crisis of media measurement

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Geoffrey Precourt, Event Reports, 4A's Transformation, March 2011

This report covers the contribution of Alan Wurtzel, NBC Universal President/Research & Media Development, to the 4A's Annual Leadership conference, in which he calls for a renewed industry effort to achieve cross-platform media metrics. View Summary

This report covers the contribution of Alan Wurtzel, NBC Universal President/Research & Media Development, to the 4A's Annual Leadership conference, in which he calls for a renewed industry effort to achieve cross-platform media metrics. He criticises its indifference to date, believing that the prospect of cross-media data is no nearer that it was five years ago, which will cause real problems for the media industry. "If you can't measure something, you can't sell it," he says.

Warc’s US editor, Geoffrey Precourt, reports on the announcement of a new tie-up between Nielsen and several of the US trade associations that will change the way TV advertising is measured. View Summary

Warc’s US editor, Geoffrey Precourt, reports on the announcement of a new tie-up between Nielsen and several of the US trade associations that will change the way TV advertising is measured. The Ad-ID system, unveiled at the Association of National Advertisers’ TV and Everything Video conference, promises to deliver ratings for individual television spots, rather than for broad-based programming. The piece looks at the implications of the announcement and includes interviews with ANA president Bob Liodice and Admap columnist Joe Mandese.

As magazines are increasingly delivered in multi-platform digital formats, and the internet continues to grow as an advertising medium, the convergence of these two trends leads buyers and sellers to seek one single source for media and consumer purchase information. View Summary

As magazines are increasingly delivered in multi-platform digital formats, and the internet continues to grow as an advertising medium, the convergence of these two trends leads buyers and sellers to seek one single source for media and consumer purchase information. This paper describes the development of a cross-media consumer database including the ‘split-weights congruent fusion’ model used while highlighting the many insights gained from this important product with numerous examples. A key benefit of this fused database is the ability of magazines and national newspapers to prove the strength of their combined audience over traditional and digital platforms.

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A Long Engagement: Why the debate about engagement metrics misses the point

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Jennifer Taylor, ESOMAR, WM3, Berlin, October 2010

Over 40 years ago Bass and Parsons declared that measuring the impact of advertising on sales is the most difficult and controversial problem in marketing. View Summary

Over 40 years ago Bass and Parsons declared that measuring the impact of advertising on sales is the most difficult and controversial problem in marketing. While still a challenge today, measurement of the effect of advertising has progressed. Marketers now have options including examining salience, aggregate sales uplifts or using gold standard single-source data to measure advertising effects. It may seem that engagement metrics are a natural progression in measuring the effect of advertising, but this presentation asks if the debate about engagement is where attention should be directed.

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The Connected Audience: Bringing together audience measurement and audience understanding across platforms

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Jennie Beck and Rhiannon Griffiths, ESOMAR, WM3, Berlin, October 2010

This presentation examines the big question facing media owners as they migrate content and advertising between diverse platforms – how do they optimize the impact of each platform when it’s hard to m...

This presentation examines the big question facing media owners as they migrate content and advertising between diverse platforms – how do they optimize the impact of each platform when it’s hard to measure their combined reach and the way they interrelate? Using a specific example of single-source integration of web behavioural data and custom survey data, the presenters highlight the challenges – and the benefits – of bringing audience measurement silos together.

Kelloggs' Rice Krispies Square is a confectionery product made from the Rice Krispies cereal and melted marshmallow, shaped into a bar. View Summary

Kelloggs' Rice Krispies Square is a confectionery product made from the Rice Krispies cereal and melted marshmallow, shaped into a bar. The product was competing in a difficult confectionery market and suffered from lack of brand name awareness, packaging recognition and understanding of the product proposition. In response, a campaign in the Irish Republic sought to draw on the heritage of the homemade 'Rice Krispie Bun' that was synonymous with growing-up by branding the Squares product as a Rice Krispie Bun in a portable bar. The initial campaign involved an animation of a Rice Krispie Bun being converted into the Bar and was promoted on TV, outdoor and in cinemas. This was followed up by advertisements which promoted new variants of the Squares product, personifying the individual 'Krispies' and demonstrating how they long to be in the 'Square' product. Over the 4 years which the campaign ran, the ROI was an average of 44.25% per year.

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Cracking the cross-media code: Using single-source measures to examine media cannibalization and convergence

An analysis of cross-media research from ESPN, a US sports network. The paper argues that much more about cross-media behavior can be understood than is commonly believed. View Summary

An analysis of cross-media research from ESPN, a US sports network. The paper argues that much more about cross-media behavior can be understood than is commonly believed. Using a variety of single-source studies, the authors suggest a method of analyzing this behavior, and offer basic principles of media behavior that are consistent across these sources, and that answer many of the "big" questions about cross-media use. The paper represents not just a summary of the best available sources on cross-media usage but points out consistent patterns in all of these sources. The authors do not confine their research or analysis to the sports category in general or to ESPN, but instead looked at total media behavior.

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IPA’s TouchPoints Touches Down in U.S.

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Geoffrey Precourt, Event Reports, 4A's Leadership, March 2010

A 2009 joint Association of National Advertisers/American Association of Advertising Agency (4A's) study of 294 marketers cited "inadequate metrics" as the most powerful obstacle in refining media mixes. View Summary

A 2009 joint Association of National Advertisers/American Association of Advertising Agency (4A's) study of 294 marketers cited "inadequate metrics" as the most powerful obstacle in refining media mixes. A new audience-metric system has been designed, based on the IPA's TouchPoints initiative. The MBI and MRI have teamed together to launch a program involving 50 respondents completing an iPhone-based electronic diary, reporting their daily activities, media usage, and mood every half hour for 10 days. This system has provided new insights with close examination of both "week-in-the-life" and "day-in-the-life" detail and will allow advertisers to target the best time and location to answer very specific needs and wants.

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From Prime Time to My Time - Integrating media audience measurment

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Andrew Green, Warc Exclusive, From Prime Time to My Time, 2010, pp. 164-171

In the final chapter of From Prime Time to My Time, Andrew Green discusses how the methods of audience measurement covered in the preceding chapters can be integrated. View Summary

In the final chapter of From Prime Time to My Time, Andrew Green discusses how the methods of audience measurement covered in the preceding chapters can be integrated. An overview of research into multi-media techniques is presented, including syndicated single-source research and custom single-source surveys.

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From media research to people research? UK audience measurement in 2010

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James Aitchison, Event Reports, MRG Annual, December 2009

At the Media Research Group's 2009 annual conference, a series of 'industry update' sessions from various UK audience research bodies outlined their respective priorities, challenges and innovations for 2010. View Summary

At the Media Research Group's 2009 annual conference, a series of 'industry update' sessions from various UK audience research bodies outlined their respective priorities, challenges and innovations for 2010. This article summarises those sessions, given by BARB (TV), which is launching a new panel; RAJAR (radio), which is experimenting with online diaries; UKOM (online), which is launching an online planning currency; Postar (outdoor), which is introducing a GPS-driven travel survey; the NRS (print), which is looking to extent readership measurement to non-print sources; and the IPA's Touchpoints survey, which is now considering how to measure word of mouth.

Reporting from ad:Tech Chicago 2009, Geoffrey Precourt, WARC's U.S. editor, covers a session on 360-degree marketing by Elva Lewis, Procter & Gamble's associate director of corporate marketing. Lewis argues that P&G is "one of the biggest and most siloed companies in the world", presenting unique challenges when it comes to understanding its customers. Currently, the FMCG giant's communications target around half of the potential U.S. audience base of 200 million people. The company's former marketing director, Jim Stengel, emphasised the importance of understanding the "who", the "what" and the "how" of the purchase process, but, until now, only the first of these criteria had been truly met, she added. However, by aggregating this information, and taking advantage of the scale of its operations, in a single-source database, P&G will now "be able to understand, for the first time, the individual. We'll know who she is. We'll know what she cares about at P&G."